seconds, his back would be to her. He was too stimulated to keep away for long. When he returned, she had to be ready. It had to be now.
Keeping her movements minimal, she located the IV tubing, gripped it, and using quick, minute circles, wound it around each hand. The polystyrene garrote she had created, nearly two feet long, rested across the tops of her thighs. Now she had to pray that Krause’s lecherous ambitions remained above her waist. Across the room, from near the door, she could hear him breathing, clearing his throat, and shifting in his chair. She tried envisioning his movements as she rehearsed her own in her mind.
Many times since joining the force she had asked herself whether she was capable of shooting to kill in order to protect herself or others. Always, the answer had been yes, but in the scenarios she created, firing her weapon to kill had always been reflex and instinctive. This time, the kill would be premeditated, deliberate, and at close range, and once she was committed, there could be no hesitation, no turning back. She tested the strength in her arms by pressing them tightly against her sides while clenching and unclenching her fists. Then she continued her deep breathing, allowing images of Gold’s victims and their families to flow through her thoughts and keep her still.
Several minutes passed. Krause’s breathing seemed more rapid now. Was he masturbating? He began humming to himself-a bizarre, tuneless incantation that Patty found quite chilling.
Finally, he stood up and returned to her.
“Oh, baby, you are so beautiful,” he whispered. “So beautiful and all mine.”
He lowered the sheet to her waist and pulled her top up above her breasts. She sensed him devouring her with his eyes. Then she felt the heat of his breath as once again he bent down and set his lips on hers. In seconds he would put his hand on her breasts again. Getting the tubing past his arm and around his neck would be much more difficult. It had to be now-right now!
She drew her hands up clear of the sheet. Then, just as Krause was reacting to the maneuver, she swept the tubing around his neck and pulled his face down against her breastbone, tightening the loop with all her strength. As she had envisioned, holding him tightly against her reduced what he could do with his arms. He flailed at her face but was unable to land a blow with any real force behind it. The patches were torn from her eyes, sending a painful blast of light through her widely dilated pupils. One random swing hit directly on the incision and bone flap on the side of her skull. She cried out, but intensified her grip even more. The tubing felt as if it was going to tear through her palms, but she battled the pain and pulled even harder. It strengthened her to realize Krause hadn’t uttered a sound. His airway was completely occluded, as were his carotid arteries.
The blinding light was rapidly giving way to movement and color. She could see his jet-black hair, then one blurry ear, then her own hand, blanched and bloodless with the effort of killing him. Krause struggled to straighten up, but instead lurched to one side and fell onto his back on the floor. Patty was pulled off the stretcher and landed heavily on top of him. The tension in her grip held. Instantly, what little leverage he had vanished. His arms went limp and flopped to the wooden floor.
Patty was looking directly into the torturer’s bulging, bloodshot eyes when he died. She heard, then smelled, then felt his bladder and bowels give way. The tension in his body ceased. His jaw went slack, and a trickle of blood emerged from the corner of his mouth. Still, she maintained her grip on the tubing, holding fast until she could no longer bear the throbbing in her hands and arms.
Ignoring as best she could the shell bursts going off in her skull and the stench of violent death, she rolled off Krause’s corpse and lay on the floor nearby, gasping for air. Finally, she propped herself up unsteadily on one elbow and took her first careful look at the man she had just killed. If she was feeling any remorse at that moment, any at all, she certainly couldn’t identify it as such. Krause had a narrow, rodentlike face, with burned-out acne and irregular, cigarette-stained teeth. His blood-red eyes still bulged almost out of their sockets.
“Beautiful,” Patty muttered. “Just beautiful.”
With difficulty she grasped the frame of the stretcher and hauled herself upright. Her legs held her there, but not without some conscious effort. Across the room was the chair from which Krause had so vigilantly guarded her-high-backed with a caned seat and no arms. There was a copy of
Expertly, Patty flipped the cylinder open and assured herself that the six chambers were full. Then, hefting the revolver in her hand, she managed a thin, bitter smile. The odds on their making it out of this mess had just shortened considerably.
Patty checked the windows and satisfied herself that without tools, there was no way out of the room except the door. Through the dense overcast, the gray afternoon light was fading. Four-thirty, she guessed, maybe five. Boyd Halliday would probably be gone by now, hurrying home to join his wife at the dinner party they were throwing for their new business associates. She had heard stories of managed-care CEOs with villas in Majorca and stables of rare antique cars. What sort of place did Halliday live in, she wondered. Would any amount of money, any amount of power, ever be enough for him? She scanned the buildings and grounds outside, trying without success to get some sense of where the farm might be located.
With Will unaccounted for and no definite idea of the firepower beyond the door, she decided that her best chance was to stay in the room and wait. The odor emanating from the body on the floor was testing that decision, but she knew that she held the advantage so long as the first person to arrive could be induced to move through the doorway and into the room-especially if that person was Marshall Gold.
The aromatic Dr. Krause was quite literally dead weight. She gave thought to somehow pulling him up onto the stretcher, covering him with a sheet, and then flattening herself against the wall behind the door. Quickly, though, she passed on the notion of hauling him up that far as a physical impossibility. Instead, staying tensed for the slightest noise outside the door, she rolled the body on its side and left it where it was. Next, she brought the chair over, and laid it on its side, adjusting Krause into a sitting position against it. Using the oxygen, IV, and catheter drainage tubing, and Krause’s belt, she lashed the body to the chair. Surprised and utterly grateful that the chair legs didn’t shatter, she hoisted her creation upright with surprising ease and dragged it to a spot about ten feet in from the door, facing the stretcher.
With the good doctor’s sports jacket draped over the back of the chair, the illusion was nearly complete, and quite good if she did say so. It became even better when she added the finishing touch of the small table that stood near the ratty mattress she assumed was Will’s bed. Setting Krause’s arm at a jaunty angle on the top, she wrapped his fingers around the half-finished glass of Coke. The position also helped brace the body against toppling over prematurely.
The lure, calculated to draw her first visitor at least several steps into the room, was in place. There was little she could do with the stretcher other than to put the thin pillow under the sheet, but by the time anyone got that far, hopefully she would be in charge.
The door to the room opened inward. Patty checked Krause one last time, then positioned herself against the wall so that it would swing toward then past her. The extra half second might make a difference. Now there was nothing to do but wait. Inside her head there seemed to be a serious synergy between her concussion and the massive pounding of her heart created by her battle with Krause. She was feeling vague and sluggish one moment, sharp and focused the next.
Images of her father and of Will, of Lieutenant Court and Brasco, of Marshall Gold’s victims and their families flowed through her mind as she crouched on one knee and waited. It was going to be over soon, she told each of them-very soon. Finally, she heard footsteps outside the door. An instant later, it swung open and Marshall Gold strode into the room.
“So, Doc,” he said cheerfully, “how’s our prize patient?”
He reached Krause’s side and actually touched the corpse on the shoulder before realizing that the stretcher was empty. At the same moment, the body and chair toppled over, taking the table and Coke with them. The glass shattered on the floor.
“Welcome back, Mr. Gold,” Patty said, standing and kicking the door shut. “Keep your hands where I can see
